Half of customers are stuck in the past
It’s no secret that Germans tend to be conservative when it comes to financial transactions. Nevertheless, the Sparkasse’s new figures for online banking are a real surprise. However, the bank does not want to be deterred by this: the Sparkasse has set itself ambitious goals for the year 2026.
The Sparkasse logo characterizes the cityscape in this country. It feels like there is a Sparkasse branch on every corner, and according to their own statements, there are a total of 12,000 branches in Germany. Is it the extensive branch network that is why Sparkasse customers are reluctant to switch to online banking?
Only half of Sparkasse customers use online banking
Of the approximately 50 million Sparkasse customers, only about half use online bankingas the bank reveals in its 2021 annual report (source: finance informatics).
Although there was growth here and the The number rose from 24.2 to 25.6 million last yearbut the low use of online banking is still surprising – after all, the Sparkasse is investing heavily in the expansion of the business area and the Sparkasse apps regularly rank at the top of the Apple and Google app stores.
In the medium term, Sparkasse would like to significantly increase the number of online banking customers. The goal is ambitious: By 2026, 35 million Sparkasse customers should be using online banking.
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Germany far behind in online banking
As A European comparison also shows that Germany is lagging behind when it comes to online banking. Half of local bank customers use online banking here. This puts the Federal Republic in one of the lower places, only in Bulgaria, Romania and Greece do fewer people use online banking (source: extra).
The picture in Scandinavia is very different: In Norway, 96 percent of customers do their banking online, Denmark is just behind with 95 percent, as is Finland with 93 percent. So Germany still has a lot of catching up to do.
